


We Don't Bleed When We Don't Fight

by ariel2me



Series: The Secret [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2018-10-27
Packaged: 2019-08-08 04:14:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16422209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariel2me/pseuds/ariel2me
Summary: Stannis Baratheon attends a feast, thinks about love and marriage, and discovers a secret.





	We Don't Bleed When We Don't Fight

**Author's Note:**

> I decided to delete my AO3 account back in April (for various reasons I won’t get into), but changed my mind after a while. A number of fics from 2012 and 2013 were already deleted, however, and I’m going to repost some of them. This one was written in 2012, and I’m currently working on a sequel where Stannis confided to Jon Arryn about his suspicions regarding Cersei and Jaime.
> 
> The title was borrowed from a line in the song Runaway by The National. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_R8Hyf3kMf0) 
> 
> I’ve done some editing and added a few things to the original fic for clarity.

_Another feast? Is there no end to all the feasting and toasting in King’s Landing?_  Stannis was late, but the noise and cheers coming from the great hall did not encourage him to walk any faster. Skipping the feast was not an option. Robert was prone to making sudden decisions and unexpected declarations during these feasts, so Stannis and Jon Arryn had always made it a point never to miss any of them, in case some kind of intervention or damage control was necessary.

The hall was so noisy that no one noticed when Stannis quietly slipped through the door. The queen and her children were sitting at the main table on the raised dais, but Robert was missing from his seat. Stannis followed Cersei’s sharp gaze across the hall and spotted Robert dancing – or at least  _trying_  to dance – with one of the serving girls. Robert’s hands went from grabbing her arms to encircling her waist, as she struggled to keep her hands, which were holding a plate of food, steady. Robert’s own feet were none too steady, and his face was flushed from the combined effect of wine and exertion.

 _Well, just another day at the feast for Robert then_ , Stannis thought, bitterly. His brother knew no shame, not even in front of his wife and children.  

Jon Arryn spotted Stannis and pointed to an empty seat next to his wife. Stannis hesitated. Lady Arryn … well, Lady Arryn made him uncomfortable. He knew that people whispered and sniggered behind his back about how every woman in the realm made him uncomfortable, including his own wife, and perhaps there was  _some_  truth to that, loathed as he was to admit it. And yet, he told himself, Lady Arryn belonged in a class of her own.

Perhaps sensing Stannis’ hesitation, or perhaps because he had something to say to Stannis, Jon Arryn whispered a few words to his wife, and they exchanged seats. Lady Arryn did not seem offended, or even curious about the request, just supremely bored, as if she, too, was finding the feast not to her liking.

Or perhaps she, too, found the prospect of sitting next to Stannis an awkward and uncomfortable proposition that she would be more than glad to miss.  

As he made his way to the table, Stannis wondered, not for the first time, about the reason behind the match between Jon Arryn and Lysa Tully. Hoster Tully had been very insistent; he only agreed to raise his banners against the Mad King after Jon Arryn had wed his younger daughter.

Surely Lord Tully could have made a match with a younger man for his daughter, and not with a man who was older than himself?  But perhaps, Stannis thought, cynically, Hoster Tully saw the gleaming possibility in the not-so-distant future. The match theoretically meant that Hoster Tully would one day have one grandson as the Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North, another grandson as the Lord of the Eyrie and Warden of the East, and of course, yet another grandson as the Lord of Riverrun and Lord Paramount of the Trident.

 _I know how this game is played after all_ , Stannis scoffed. (“It is not a game, Stannis, merely the custom of the day, and a custom with perfectly rational reasons behind it,” his father had chided him in the past, when he spoke disparagingly of it, but much as he loved his lord father, he had not been convinced of this.)

But perhaps Hoster Tully also had another motivation in mind for desiring the marriage between his younger daughter and Jon Arryn. Stannis had seen the way Lady Arryn’s eyes would sometimes follow Petyr Baelish with a queer, hungry look in her gaze, and he wondered if there had been something between the two of them in the past. He could not tell for certain, inexperienced as he was in the ways of the heart. But it would not have been a match that would please Hoster Tully; that much was certain, at least.

_I may not know the ways of the heart, but I know the ways of ambitious lords._

What was it like, to love one, and then to marry another?  As always, it annoyed him beyond measure whenever his mind turned to this question. Why should he wonder about it after all? It was no concern of his. And more importantly, he reminded himself, almost no one with noble blood in the Seven Kingdoms married for love. Marriage was about upholding the family name and building alliances. Or about keeping the bloodline pure, if you were a Targaryen.

 _Davos married for love_ , a rebellious voice spoke louder in his head.  _Davos still loves his wife, and is still loved by her, seven sons and many years later,_ the voice that sounded so much like his own continued.  _I have no time to argue with myself_! He breathed a sigh of relief as he reached the table and sat down next to Jon Arryn, ignoring the insistent voice in his head.

“Robert seems to be enjoying himself,” he said, pointedly.

Jon Arryn let out a sigh. “The children should not have been here, watching their father carrying on like this.”

“Their father should not have been carrying on like this in the first place, regardless of the children’s presence.”

“Maybe if Lyanna Stark had lived …”

Stannis stared at Jon Arryn with incredulity. “Do you truly believe that, Lord Arryn? Do you truly believe that Robert would have been a different kind of man altogether had he married Lyanna Stark and not Cersei Lannister?”

There was a long pause before Jon Arryn spoke again. “I don’t know. I would like to think so.”

“A tiger does not change his stripes merely because he had a different tigress in his bed,” said Stannis, contemptuously.  

 _And you were the one who vigorously promoted the match with Cersei Lannister, who counseled Robert to wed her_ , he could have added, but did not, this time.

Stannis started eating, and they lapsed into silence. Usually he would welcome this, for he could not abide pointless chatter at the dinner table, but today the silence felt oppressive.

 _Davos was not born of noble blood._   _Davos was a man who made his own way in the world, and thus was free to choose his bride_ , he restarted the argument with himself.  _Davos did not have thousands of years of family honor and family duty to consider._

A loud, crashing noise distracted Stannis, before the debate raging in his head could continue. He didn’t need to look up from his plate to know what had happened. Drunk Robert, falling down. Drunk Robert, crashing into something. Or drunk Robert, crashing into something and then falling down. He finished the meat on his plate before looking up to see Robert being helped back to his seat by one of the Kingsguards.

The Kingsguard in question was the queen’s twin brother Jaime Lannister. Stannis recognized him even from the back, by his distinctive golden hair. He saw a look passed between Cersei and Jaime, a five-second glance at most, yet it was as if his own heart had stopped beating for a moment.

 _This is the thing I have never known myself, but could still see in others, as clearly as I could see the sky on a sunny day._  It was no sibling love, this; he knew immediately, putting together all the pieces of a puzzle he had never even consciously realized was in existence before, a puzzle that had been nagging at the back of his mind for quite some time, in truth.  

 _This_  was a man and a woman bound together by that mysterious force that singers and storytellers loved to praise and acclaim, that mysterious force Stannis had always viewed askance and with a great suspicion. But for a moment, for a single, unblessed moment, despite himself, despite what he had always believed and claimed to believe about that mysterious force, he was struck by such a rush of pure, unadulterated envy that he was surprised to find himself still breathing, still calmly sitting down.

He had to look away from the two of them, so he shifted his gaze to another direction, to Joffrey, Tommen and Myrcella. And that was when envy turned into a horrifying realization, as he stared and stared at their golden hair and at every detail of their features.

More lion than stag. More Cersei than Robert, he had always thought before, but now, he suspected, more  _Jaime_  than Robert.

_Love is not merely a feeling. Love drives hideous deeds and actions. Love hurts, destroys and annihilates._


End file.
